Reply To: TBC: Briarwood House itself narrates some of the chapters.
Briarwood House is a most personable and opinionated narrator, almost a character in its own right. Narrators usually come across to me as disinterested recorders of the story, neither character, plot nor setting, just connecting separate pieces of the story. Not Briarwood House!
It provides commentary, humorous and wise as Nancy and Maureen note, on the people who live in it. The house is an observer but not a dispassionate one. It has feelings, boredom until Grace arrives, disliked Mrs. Nilsson since the day she arrived, fondness and protectiveness of her boarders and a reservoir of stories about each one of them. The Briarwood House chapters certainly colored my view of the characters and created a sense of suspense and foreboding.
